“…”
I should be thankful for XTRO. I got quite a bit accomplished while watching it: checked my e-mail – both personal and work, wrote a blurb or two for the blog, gchatted with some friends, went and heated up some Pop-Tarts…it’s too bad that being engaged by it wasn’t one of them. If the previous night’s selection, Sleepy Hollow, proved how vital the British studio Hammer was to horror, XTRO goes to show how far the state of horror across the pond was after Hammer stopped producing films in the early ‘70s. It lacks any character development, discernible plot, subtlety, or class – the film’s only claim to fame are its admittedly gross special effects, including an alien proboscis rape and a full-grown man being birthed by the unlucky rapee. There’s absolutely no verve to the direction, the dialogue is stale and the acting even more so, and the soundtrack is grating in the extreme. Future Bond girl Maryam d'Abo gets naked, so if you spent an early adolescence oogling her in The Living Daylights, that’s a treat. The film takes a decidedly surreal turn around the climax, which is incomprehensible and signifies nothing, but at least provides a break from the constantly bland shots of a pasty English kid manipulating toys with his mind. I’m doubly disappointed by this one, because XTRO was one of those VHS covers I longingly gazed at as a kid, wanting to rent but forbidden to do so by the parents. I should have known they had my best interests at heart all along.
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